In the lower culture it is otherwise. The Ewhe of Togoland believe in the possibility of conjugal intercourse and other communion between a dead and a living spouse; but when it takes place it results in death to the survivor. Stringent measures are therefore adopted to prevent it. These measures are all the more necessary, since the survivor must during the period of mourning—in which all the danger seems to be concentrated—lay aside all clothing and ornaments and go entirely naked. A widow for the first six weeks has nothing to fear so much as her deceased husband. She must remain all that time in the hut beneath which her husband is buried, only leaving it for short intervals to bathe and for other necessary purposes. In token of mourning she goes with bowed head and eyes bent down, crossing her arms over her breast so that the left hand rests on the right shoulder, in order that “no mischief befall her from the dead man.” She also carries a club to drive him away in case he wish to approach her, otherwise there would immediately be an end of her.[210.1] She sleeps, moreover, on the club, because, if she did not, he would take it away from her unperceived. Ashes must be mingled with her food and drink to prevent her husband from partaking of it—a sign probably of the renewal of conjugal life—in which case she would die. She must not answer any call, must eat neither beans, nor flesh nor fish, drink neither palm-wine nor rum; for any infringement of these prohibitions would cost her life. Smoking is the only solace permitted to her. During the night a charcoal fire is kept up in the hut; and upon this fire she strews a powder, consisting of peppermint-leaves dried and rubbed down, and red pepper, so as to cause an evil-smelling smoke, which makes the dead man—it would make any living man—averse to entering.[210.2] After the death of his wife a man, in some districts at all events, must remain for three days in his hut and abstain from intercourse with his other wives. At the expiration of this period the women of the town assemble and wash him with medicine prepared by the witch-doctor. Without this precaution none of his other wives would dare to come near him, lest they too should die.[211.1]
Before passing to another cultural area we may note two other significant customs in Togoland. Weddings there, as elsewhere, are occasions of festivity; and the firing of guns is doubtless an expression of joy and triumph, for the Negro delights in noise. Even when, among the Akposso, in the administrative district of Atakpame, a man succeeds in seducing a married woman away from her husband into his own house, he fires a gun, for he says: “I have now a new wife!” With that the marriage is concluded, and he gives a great feast and defies the former husband, who sometimes attempts to recover her by force. But if the former husband be dead he fires no gun on marrying the widow.[211.2] On the other hand, when a man’s wife dies in her house the husband fears to enter it again, and it is usually destroyed. Even where it is not destroyed, it is never again entered by the widower or any of his relations or dependants. Only a stranger not belonging to his family may dare to dwell there. If the widower take a new wife, he builds her a new house.[212.1] To build a new house for a new wife is usual; what is important to observe here is that the old house in which the deceased wife dwelt may be safely inhabited by a stranger, and only by a stranger.
Precautions like those of the Togo are taken by widows in Loango. All the openings in a widow’s hut are closed, and a spell is laid on every place where the ghost might harbour. But that is not enough. What she fears is that her deceased husband, or some other disembodied spirit greedy of her society, will visit her by night. That would result either in her death, or in her bringing some fearful monster into the world. So the medicine-men prepare for her, according to the rules of their art, a piece of wood wherewith to fasten the door by way of bar or bolt; or they give her a fringed cord to stretch behind, and another to stretch round, her bed, both of them of course enchanted. More than this, the door of the hut is changed to another side, further to mystify the unwelcome revenant. If she be very nervous they lead her in the darkness by a roundabout way to another hut, carefully erasing her footsteps, unless they carry her or make her wear shoes that will render the traces unrecognizable. Besides that, they furnish her with a magical staff to embrace when she goes to sleep. Sometimes at least it is carried in daylight also. One would think such precautions would daunt the most evil-designing ghost. If any ghost, however, were so obdurate, or so conceited of his power to break down these defences, as to persist, he would find they were mere outworks, and that there were stronger and more effectual lines behind. The witch-doctors are not easily beaten—provided they have a client who is willing and able to pay the enhanced cost of their services. Without going into all the details of what is in effect a war to the bitter end against the intrusive ghost, it may be said generally that they will give him no rest; they will beat the dwelling inside and outside with their conjuring implements; they will sweep the courtyard clear; they will leave no corner where the poor wretch can skulk; they will lay spells; they will hunt him through the village with beating, with sweeping, with fire, with the discharge of guns; they will rouse the whole population to their assistance; they will lay bombs laden with magical virtue; they will stretch magical cords across every path leading to the village. If, in spite of all these boisterous proceedings, the ghost be so hardy or so clever as to continue haunting the place, there will be nothing for it but to remove the village, or to catch the supernatural enemy and to shoot him dead beyond resurrection. But this is obviously an extreme measure, to which it is seldom necessary to resort, and which can only be undertaken by a specialist of the first rank and at a corresponding cost. The ghosts of deceased men are, in Loango, scarcely more to be dreaded than those of women dead in childbed, or of marriageable girls. The former are especially dreaded by pregnant women and married men, for their vengeful malice. The latter attack married men in their sleep, or seduce them under varied forms; and to yield means impotence or death.[213.1]
A little further to the south, beyond the Congo, it was the custom in Matiambo for widows to sacrifice themselves, together with the slaves of the deceased, who were sent to accompany their master into the other world. Widows who neglected to do so, and who escaped victorious from the ordeal for witchcraft, felt the soul of the departed spouse oppressing their breasts; and the witch-doctor was required to purify them before they ventured to contract a new marriage.[214.1] The process of purification is not described, but is probably like that reported by a missionary who has spent many years on the Congo. The widow must go to a running stream, taking her husband’s bed and one or two of the articles he has commonly used. These are all placed in the middle of the stream; and after she has well washed she sits on the bed. The witch-doctor dips her three times in the water and then dresses her; the bed and other articles are broken and thrown down the stream to float away. She is led out of the stream; a raw egg is broken, and she swallows it; a toad is killed, and some of the blood rubbed on her lips; lastly, a fowl is killed and hung by the roadside—presumably a sacrifice to the deceased. She returns to her town. On arriving there, she sits on the ground, stretching out her legs before her, and her deceased husband’s brother steps over them. She is then free to marry again; but inasmuch as widows are not allowed to marry for a year or two after the husband’s death, the rite is most likely not performed until the end of that period. It is only necessary after the death of a first husband. Corresponding ceremonies are necessary for a man after his first wife’s death. He may not leave his house, except at night, for six days, and he must sleep only on a basket made by plaiting together two palm-fronds. He then undergoes a similar purification to that just described, with some additional precautions. On returning home his deceased wife’s sister steps over his legs. No woman would dare to marry him until these rites are performed.[215.1] Although they do not seem to be confined to cases in which oppression by the ghost is endured, it is fairly certain that their object is to get rid, not merely of the death-pollution, but of the ghost. We shall see directly what is the meaning of the ceremonial stepping over the survivor’s legs.
Meanwhile let us cross the continent to Delagoa Bay. The neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay, together with a large extent of country to the north in Portuguese and across the border in British territory, is occupied by various branches of a Bantu people frequently known as Shangaans, but which it is convenient to call the Thonga, a name proposed by M. Henri Junod, a Swiss Protestant missionary. The tribe more immediately around the Bay is called the Baronga. The rites of purification practised by the Thonga on different occasions—among others, notably after a death—are very remarkable, and indicate a considerable preoccupation with sexual matters. These rites have been carefully described by M. Junod, but they have not yet been sufficiently studied to enable us to pronounce on the meaning of them all. I shall therefore only refer to one or two.
The death-pollution affects not merely all who come into contact with the corpse; it affects the entire kin, and indeed the whole of the village in which the deceased resided, whether related to him or not. But it affects especially his wives, and among these his principal or “great” wife. Like the grave-diggers who have been handling the corpse, she is required to take a sweat-bath. She is required, moreover, to fumigate herself over a fire of dry grass from the roof of the hut, mingled with cock’s dung (not hen’s). A reed or a strip of palm-leaf with a few other leaves suspended to it is then put round her waist. She enters the hut, which has been already unroofed, wailing to her deceased husband, and crawls out again by the hole at the back made to remove the corpse, as if she were herself a corpse. She cannot remain there. A new hut is therefore built for her; and there she must afterwards sleep, until the days of her purification are accomplished and she passes into the possession of her husband’s kinsman to whom she is assigned. Even for the subordinate wives (who have their own rites of purification to observe) it would be dangerous to sleep on the very ground where they have been accustomed to meet the deceased: hence their huts must also be removed. It is difficult to understand what danger they are exposed to, unless it be assaults from the ghost. The huts they occupy do not seem to be polluted, at least beyond the general pollution of the village, or they could not continue to occupy them. But the sites must be changed; and this can hardly be for any other purpose than to mystify the ghost.[216.1]
Turning now to two other widely separated cultural regions, we will first of all notice a significant article of dress worn by a widow in the eastern islands of Torres Straits. The ordinary dress of a woman comprised invariably a petticoat (sometimes more than one) of ample size, extending from the waist to the knee or thereabouts, and made of split leaves or bark-fibre. But a widow, and she alone, “twisted up a petticoat of banana leaves, and, passing it between her legs, fixed it at her waistband. This was the first sign of widowhood,” and had a special name. It was put on as soon as the preliminary ceremonies had finished, and prior to the removal of the body for the purpose of mummification. The widow continued to wear it after she had discarded every other sign of mourning, and until she married again.[217.1] In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, inhabited by a population consisting, so far as has been ascertained, of a fusion of Melanesians and Papuans, the lot of a widower is not a happy one. So closely is he haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife that he becomes a social outcast, shunned by everyone, and loses all civil rights, such is the horror he inspires. Excluded thus from communion with his fellow-men, he skulks alone in the long grass and the bushes; for he must not be seen. He invariably carries, like the Ewhe widow, a tomahawk to defend himself against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who, we are told, would do him an ill turn if she could. This may, to be sure, as the missionary to whom we are indebted for the report presents it, be no more than the natural malignancy of the dead, whose chief delight is to harm the living.[218.1] The missionary, however, may not have penetrated the true inwardness of the superstition. At all events, elsewhere there is no room for doubt.
Among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia both widows and widowers took elaborate precautions against the persecution of their deceased spouses. Directly death occurred the survivor went out and passed four times through a patch of rose-bushes, doubtless to ensure that the spirit should not cling to him or her. Probably for the same end ablutions in the creeks morning and evening for a year were prescribed. Rigid abstention from certain kinds of food was part of the discipline; and, contrary to the practice of the Ewhe, tobacco was also forbidden. During a whole year the survivor was required to sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread at the head and foot, while in the middle were not only rose-bush sticks, but also branches of bearberry, mountain-ash, juniper, sage, and so forth. A widow could neither lie or sit where her children slept, nor let them lie down on her bed. Finally, a widow often wore a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, that the ghost of her husband should not have conjugal intercourse with her.[219.1] The aborigines of Hispaniola also believed that the dead walked in the night and entered into converse with living people, even in their beds; but if we may trust Peter Martyr, though in human shape they thus approached women, seeking sexual intercourse, “when the matter cometh to actual deede,” suddenly they vanished away.[219.2] Our information concerning this unfortunate people, speedily destroyed by the Spaniards, is extremely meagre; and we do not know whether any precautions were taken against these ghostly visits. Among the Tarahumares of Mexico three great feasts are given at intervals after a death. Until the last of them is held the deceased hangs about the neighbourhood. Their object therefore is to get rid of the ghost. To that end he is presented with gifts and adjured to depart with them, and not to come and disturb the survivors. At the second, and especially at the third feast, ceremonial races are performed, in order to chase him away. Hikuli, the sacred plant of the Tarahumares, plays a prominent part in these festivities, for it “is thought to be very powerful in running off the dead, chasing them to the end of the world, where they join the other dead.” The third feast, the most elaborate of all, is deemed to be at last effectual. Not until it is over “will a widower or a widow marry again, being more afraid of the dead than are the other relatives.”[219.3] It is not expressly stated what their fear is; but in the light of other examples it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that it arises from jealousy on the part of the deceased.
At all events I have shown that among the Negroes on the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea, among the Bantu about the Lower Congo, and among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia, the fear is seriously entertained that the deceased will seek a renewal of conjugal intercourse, and the utmost precautions are taken to prevent it. The precautions taken by the Baronga (also a Bantu tribe) in South-East Africa, and by some Melanesian peoples of the Torres Straits Islands and the mainland of New Guinea, strongly suggest the same fear. The ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola attributed sexual desires to the dead, though they do not seem to have believed in the possibility of their accomplishment; and the Tarahumare husband or wife is afraid to marry again until the deceased spouse has been finally driven away from the society of the living to herd with the other dead at the end of the world. It is very striking that the populations of areas so widely different in race and culture, as well as so far apart in space, as some of these, should display the identical terror exhibited in the tales and superstitions cited from ancient and modern Europe and from China. The story of the generation of Harpocrates, though related of a god, points to similar ideas in ancient Egypt; and it has its analogues in India and the East Indian Archipelago.
Practices exist, moreover, in other countries that seem to bear witness to the same terror, though the terror itself is not recorded. In such cases they may be indirect evidence of its existence. The practices I refer to are such as that among the Kikuyu and Anyanja in East-Central Africa. The former are a tribe Bantu in speech and mainly Bantu in blood and custom, though mingled with other elements. On the third day after the burial of a husband the elders assemble at the village to kill a ram. This ceremony has the effect of cleansing the village at large “from the stain of death”; but something more is needed by the widow. Accordingly “the elders bring with them one of their number who is very poor, and of the same clan as the deceased, and he has to sleep in the hut of the senior widow of the deceased,” and to have sexual relations with her. His poverty, and the rule that “he generally lives on in the village and is looked upon as a stepfather to the children,” point to the service he thus performs being considered attended with some danger, and therefore not to be undertaken except in hope of an adequate reward.[221.1] The Anyanja, likewise a Bantu tribe, settled at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, hold a beer-drinking accompanied by dance and song a month after the burial, which takes place two or three days after the death. Up to that time conjugal relations are forbidden throughout the village of the deceased. The widow or widower and then each relative in turn is shaved, and cohabitation by all except the widow is resumed. She must wait until the second beer-drinking, six months or a year later. At this second ceremony dancing takes place on the first night, and beer is drunk the next day. Before sunset on the first day the widow is again shaven, and the mother of the deceased informs her that she is now free to marry again. That night “she has to sleep with a man paid by her relations.” He is not her permanent husband; his services are merely required as a preliminary to her marriage. According to the account from which I am quoting it would appear that she may marry after mourning two or three months, but not without the same previous ritual coition, else “her second husband would die, should she have committed adultery.” A widower, on the other hand, “mourns five or six months and is then given medicine, after which he may marry again, and without which, should he marry, his new wife would die.”[222.1] There are some difficulties here. It seems clear that until the mourning is over the widows cannot marry again, and the length of mourning is decided by the relatives of the deceased; it is closed with the beer-drinking. When it is over, the widows select their husbands from among the kindred of the deceased; he who marries the chief wife is the heir. A widow cannot marry outside this limited circle, unless she, or her new husband, be prepared to repay her bride-price, and often more. Customs doubtless differ, but this is the usual course. It is curious too that the second husband of a widow should die, if he married her without the previous coition by another man, only if she had committed adultery, whereas the woman marrying a widower will die in any case if he have not had medicine. It is probable that there has been some misunderstanding of the informants and that the second husband runs the risk of death in any case by wedding a widow who has not undergone the regular preliminary.[222.2] The probability is confirmed by the practice of the Yaos, a neighbouring tribe, among whom the second husband pays a man to pass a night with the widow before he takes her.[223.1] A further example may be given from a wholly different cultural area. Among the Kamtchadals no one would be willing to marry a widow “unless her sins have been previously taken away by the highest degree of familiarity granted to anyone who wishes to render her this service.” The writer to whom we are indebted for the information reported in the eighteenth century that the natives imagined that this expiation might cause the expiator to die like the defunct husband, so that the poor women would remain widows but for the assistance of the Russian soldiers, who were not afraid of exposing themselves to a danger so equivocal.[223.2]